The baseline: Anthony, Nuggets playing NBA version of ‘chicken’

Watching the telecast of the Nuggets-Mavericks game on Thursday night, you couldn’t help but notice how badly Carmelo Anthony is trying to keep the Nuggets on a winning track.

Now, it seems he is even willing to consider signing that three-year, $64.4 million contract extension the Nuggets have had on the table all season.

What we have now in Denver is a classic game of basketball “chicken.”

Anthony has refused to sign the extension to force the Nuggets to trade him, but only to a team, and a place, he wants to be. Specifically, New York.

The Nuggets have refused to accept a trade from a position of weakness, which is where Anthony put new general manager Masai Ujiri.

As the Feb. 24 trade deadline approaches, though, the leverage has begun to shift, and not in Anthony’s favor.

If the Nuggets let the deadline pass, the only way Anthony gets his $64.4 million is to sign the extension before July 1, when he becomes a free agent. He and the Nuggets know that with a new collective bargaining agreement in the works and a lockout likely, no team will be able to offer him that much in an altered free-agent market.

Someone will have to change course before there is a head-on collision.

The smart money is on the money. As a wise NBA executive once proclaimed: “In this league, greed and pretty women are undefeated.”